Producing Graphene Materials

Build up of the graphene materials industry has progressed a bit more slowly than originally expected a decade ago as scientists and engineers peered through their electron microscopes at single atoms of carbon and counted their many attributes. At the time the potential to improve performance in end products like metal alloys and electronics seemed limitless. Unfortunately, reality has not imitated early dreams. Those companies that have brought graphene to the commercial market will attest to the challenges of jumping off the laboratory bench and into a factory.

Even more frustrating is the sourcing of graphene to use in research, product development and production. It is hardly practical to use the scotch tape method used by Andre Greim and Konstantin Novoselov, the Nobel Prizing winning scientists who originally isolated graphene. There are more scalable processes such as liquid phase exfoliation that strips one-atom thick sheets off graphite blocks.

In this and the next three posts we look at the production of graphene materials that have successfully scaled production. Which seem capable of extracting value from the upstream end of the supply chain?